Corporate volunteering, positive relationships at work, affective commitment, and work engagement: A mediated moderator model

Purpose: The aim of this study is to test for moderating role of corporate volunteering in relationships between perceived supervisor support, positive relationships at work, work meaningfulness, and work engagement.Methodology/approach: The study is based on a survey conducted on a sample of 724 Polish employees, both involved and non-involved in corporate volunteering.Findings: Results of the study suggest that employee participation in corporate volunteering moderates the link between positive relationships at work and work engagement, and the link between perceived supervisor support and work engagement mediated by positive relationships at work.Implications: Results of the study are consistent with previous studies, which have been proved theoretically by the conservation of resources theory (COR) and self determination theory (SDT). Besides, the findings deliver practical implications. Companies are recommended to design employee-friendly volunteering activities to meet employee needs, and attract those employees who have never participated in volunteering.Originality/value: The study explains the effects of corporate volunteering. It also contributes to the field of organizational behaviors by arguing for the direct and indirect positive relationships between perceived supervisor support and work engagement.Keywords: corporate volunteering, affective commitment, work engagement, positive relationships at workPaper type: Research pape

Testing The Relationship Between Trust And Positive Relationships Within A Top Management Team: A Second-Order Structural Equation Modeling Approach

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationships between the following two main concepts: trust within a team and positive interpersonal relationships within a team based on empirical research conducted in top management teams (TMTs).Design/Methodology/Approach: In accordance with the positive approach in management sciences, positive relationships and trust within teams are crucial resources which allow management teams to face the strategic challenges of the modern market. Based on critical literature review, the theoretical framework of the model was created to test the relationship between antecedents of trust and positive interpersonal relationships within TMTs. The study is based on a survey conducted on a sample of 123 top managers and members of teams in Poland. The verification of the theoretical model was performed based on a second-order structural equation modelling approach.Findings: This research has shown a significant positive impact of trust on positive interpersonal relationships in TMT. In addition, it was shown that among the analysed antecedents of trust, competence has the strongest impact on positive interpersonal relations, especially connectivity.Implications/limitations: This study has some limitations, such as the limitation to a quantitative method to focus on one specific aim. The sample size is not large, but nevertheless represents more than a quarter of the population of medium and large companies in the industry under study in which strategic decisions are made by teams. Furthermore, the cross-sectional nature of the study does not authorize causal claims, so future prospective studies are needed to develop knowledge about the nature and direction of the relationship between trust and positive relationships.Originality/value: Studies of managerial teams in the field of interpersonal relations are rare. This paper contributes to filling this gap by selecting TMT teams as subjects for research. The study reported in this paper contributes to current understanding of the nature of relationship between trust and positive relationships in team.Keywords: trust, positive relationships, top management team (TMT), trust within a teamPaper type: Research paperPurpose: This paper presents the results of investigation of how trust within the team affects positive interpersonal relationships in top management teams (TMT). Design/Methodology/Approach: In accordance with the positive approach in management sciences positive relationships and trust within teams are crucial resources which allow management teams to face the strategic challenges of the modern market. Based on critical literature review the theoretical framework of the model was created to test the relationship between antecedents of trust and positive interpersonal relationships within TMTs. The study is based on a survey conducted on a sample of 123 top managers and members of teams in Poland. The verification of the theoretical model was performed based on a second-order structural equation modelling approach. Findings: This research shows that among antecedents of trust Originality/value: Studies of managerial teams in the field of interpersonal relations are rare. This paper contributes to fill this gap by selecting TMT teams as subjects for research. The study reported in this paper contributes to current understanding of the nature of relationship between trust and positive relationships in team. Keywords: trust, positive relationships, top management team (TMT), trust within team Paper type: Research paper

ChatEval: Towards Better LLM-based Evaluators through Multi-Agent Debate

Text evaluation has historically posed significant challenges, often demanding substantial labor and time cost. With the emergence of large language models (LLMs), researchers have explored LLMs' potential as alternatives for human evaluation. While these single-agent-based approaches show promise, experimental results suggest that further advancements are needed to bridge the gap between their current effectiveness and human-level evaluation quality. Recognizing that best practices of human evaluation processes often involve multiple human annotators collaborating in the evaluation, we resort to a multi-agent debate framework, moving beyond single-agent prompting strategies. The multi-agent-based approach enables a group of LLMs to synergize with an array of intelligent counterparts, harnessing their distinct capabilities and expertise to enhance efficiency and effectiveness in handling intricate tasks. In this paper, we construct a multi-agent referee team called ChatEval to autonomously discuss and evaluate the quality of generated responses from different models on open-ended questions and traditional natural language generation (NLG) tasks. Our analysis shows that ChatEval transcends mere textual scoring, offering a human-mimicking evaluation process for reliable assessments. Our code is available at https://github.com/chanchimin/ChatEval

Controlled Interfacial Reactions and Superior Mechanical Properties of High Energy Ball Milled/Spark Plasma Sintered Ti–6Al–4V–Graphene Composite

Ball milling process has become one of the effective methods for dispersing graphene nanoplates (GNPs) uniformly into matrix; however, there are often serious issues of structural integrity and interfacial reactions of GNPs with matrix. Herein, GNPs/Ti‐6Al‐4V (GNPs/TC4) composites are synthesized using high energy ball milling (HEBM) and spark plasma sintering. Effects of ball milling on microstructural evolution and interfacial reactions of GNPs/TC4 composite powders during HEBM are investigated. As ball milling time increase, particles size of TC4 is first increased (e.g., ≈104.15 μm, 5 h), but then decreased to ≈1.5 μm (15 h), which is much smaller than that of original TC4 powders (≈86.8 μm). TiC phases are in situ formed on the surfaces of TC4 particles when ball milling time is 10Thinsp;h. GNPs/TC4 composites exhibit 36–103% increase in compressive yield strength and 57–78% increase in hardness than those of TC4 alloy, whereas the ductility is reduced from 28% to 7% with an increase of ball milling time (from 2 to 15 h). A good balance between high strength (1.9 GPa) and ductility (17%) of GNPs/TC4 composites is achieved when the ball milling time is 10 h, attributing to the synergistic effects of grain refinement strengthening, solid solution strengthening, and load transfer strengthening from GNPs and in situ formed TiC

Simultaneously enhancing the strength and ductility in titanium matrix composites via discontinuous network structure

In this study, titanium matrix composites reinforced with graphene nanoplates (GNPs) were successfully prepared via an in-situ processing strategy. Both TiC nanoparticles and TiC@GNPs strips are in-situ formed at the grain boundaries, and enhance interfacial bonding strength between GNPs and Ti matrix by acting as rivets in the microstructure. The GNPs can be retained in the center of TiC layer, which provides a shielding protection effect for the GNPs. These in-situ formed TiC nanoparticles are linked together to form a discontinuous and three-dimensional (3D) network structure. Due to the formation of 3D network architecture and improved interfacial bonding, the composites show both high strength and good ductility. The significant strengthening effect reinforced by the GNPs can be attributed to a homogeneous distribution of in-situ formed TiC nanoparticles and TiC@GNPs strips, resulting in TiC interface/particle strengthening and excellent interfacial load transfer capability

Continuous and comprehensive atmospheric observations in Beijing : a station to understand the complex urban atmospheric environment

Peer reviewe

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data